| The overall goal of English curriculum at elementary education stage is to develop students'comprehensive language competence, which is cultivated on the basis of the integral development of the attainments, including language skills, language knowledge, affection and attitudes, learning strategies and cultural awareness. While assignment is the extension and development of classroom teaching, it is one of the ways of achieving the curriculum goal. With the development of quality education and the implementation of the new curriculum, researches on assignment design become more and more. Many researchers start reflecting the problems of assignment design so as to improve it. However, on the whole, assignment is still the weak link of the English teaching reform, and the researches on assignment design in rural junior high schools are far from enough.Closely around the two major research questions of what the current situation of English assignment design in rural junior high schools is and what suggestions the research can offer English teachers in those schools, the research employs the methods of questionnaire, literature review, interview and observation to do surveys on the current situation of English assignment design and implementation in rural junior high schools with the purpose of mastering the true situation of English assignment design there, to analyse the existing problems and causes, and then to put forward suggestions on English assignment design according to MI theory and the local conditions, etc. By means of literature review, it can be concluded and found out that the researches on assignment abroad start quite early which are all-round and multi-perspective, and they have made quantities of findings, however, there are still some shortcomings. Though the domestic researches on assignment start much later and lack professional, in-depth, and systematic researches, they cover a wide scope and have made some progress. Through doing questionnaires among students and teachers, interviewing and observing students'assignment samples, the research finds out that there are still many problems in English assignment design due to the backward local conditions, teaching ideas, etc. For instance, the assignment form is too simplex and the content is too mechanical and boring and so on. The research analyses and explores the causes of the existing problems and comes up with eight principles of English assignment design and some suggestions for English teachers in accordance with the requirements of the curriculum goal and tasks, the MI theory and the backward local conditions. |
